Authors: Deborah Levy
Mr Tens looks at his watch. ‘Seven fifty-five, Louise. I think you should go down now and change into your overalls. We’ve
got a delivery of Argentinian Syrah – that’s wine, Mrs O’Reilly – arriving any minute.’
Louise kisses her mother goodbye for the day. They still always kiss when they’re going to be away from each other. Every time Louise brings home a FreezerWorld chicken bought with her staff discount card, she feels really good to be looking after her mother. Her mother is everything. She owes her shiny hair to Mrs O’Reilly’s gentle hands.
Louise hovers outside the door to make sure Mr Tens is not going to shout at her mother. No one,
no one
is going to treat her mother bad. She’ll kill them. That’s all. Dead them. If it wasn’t for Mrs O’Reilly, she’d still be sick and shivering in a sleeping bag on the streets.
It’s all right in there. Mr Tens definitely likes her. Saying something how she’s a bit slow with the unpacking, but he’s keeping an eye on her. ‘I make sure Louise takes her breaks and knows what to do when she gets back. Not to worry, Mrs O’Reilly.’
Nothing to worry about.
The pink hair slides. Mrs O’Reilly fiddled about with the little hearts in Louise’s hair. Rearranged them. And then she saw the orange ankle boots. Did Danny buy them? No.
So her girl’s getting her own style worked out, is she? A bit of get-up-and-go? That’s good. Her girl needs a bit of gingering up; they’re cheerful, aren’t they? Time to have something to eat. Mrs O’Reilly wants her daughter to have an early night.
Louise is lying to her mother for the first time ever. And more lies coming up. It can’t be helped, it really can’t. The Louise tangle. Mr England is going to have to fork out, readies on the table
and
answer her questions. Cos she likes the brother and sister. She wants to spend time with them. Like the girl
said. Have a laugh. But they fucked it. They’d better watch out. Giving her things and trashing Danny. Louise never forgets. Never. Her head is not full of holes like some people. Mrs O’Reilly is stroking Louise’s arm. The one with Mr England’s address on it. Calming her girl. Asking her again if there’s something on her mind?
Merc Madness. Raj has gone berserk. He can’t leave the Merc alone. He’s bribing his brother to look after the shop for him. Raj’s brother is only nine. Can hardly add up. Raj’s family are losing out. The more Merc meddling he does, the more he finds to do. He’s obsessed. Doesn’t care that his brother sold a glass jar of bolognese sauce and two boxes of teabags for twelve pence. Word has got out. Stupid Club has increased its membership. Especially when Raj’s brother is on the till. The new Stupid Club topic is about leaves. How in late autumn, beginning of winter, the leaves from the hedges fall onto the pavement. The refuse collectors aren’t going to take them away, are they? And the man that sweeps the street on Mondays doesn’t sweep the leaves, he just sweeps the litter. He doesn’t see leaves as being litter. That means Stupid Club have to walk over the leaves on their way back from the corner shop. Well, if you’re not looking where you’re going, you can trip over the leaves. If you’re walking your dog to the corner shop, he gets the leaves stuck in his paws, doesn’t he? Before you know it, the house is full of leaves. Indoors has become just like outdoors. What’s the point of having a house if it looks like outdoors? It just takes a bit of rain to exacerbate the situation. Wet leaves are an accident waiting to happen. Easy to slip, break a leg or sprain your ankle, the next thing you know you’re in the hospital using up a bed that someone who needs a bone-marrow transplant could have had if it wasn’t for the local leaf situation.
No wonder Raj’s baby brother wants to get rid of Stupid Club any way he can. He’d give away the entire contents of his dad’s shop just to get them out. They should stop taking their pills and eat more sugar and pork fat. Thing is, they’ve got relatives. The Stupid gene lives on. Raj has given his brother some advice about Stupid Club. What to do when he feels he’s losing a grip on his good upbringing. First thing is to turn all the heating in the shop up full. Try to boil ’em out. But that didn’t work because Stupid Club rallied to the challenge. Put on T-shirts and shorts every time they ventured out to the corner shop. Stood around wiping the sweat off their cheeks, sharing a bottle of water, in this together, enjoying themselves while Raj and his brother suffered the rage of their father when he got his gas bill. So Raj bought his brother a pile of comics and some earplugs. He knows what exposure to Stupid Club is like. He’s got two more suggestions to make and then he must get on with cleaning out the carburettor. One: If their lips move in your direction, just say ‘That’s only right, isn’t it?’ Say it every time. Get them used to the routine. Don’t ever say anything else. Two: He’ll ask their father to contact Amnesty.
Sometimes Billy makes him special pizzas and takes them out, sizzling hot in the baking tin. Raj has been very complimentary about his pizzas, which is good for Billy’s pizza confidence. Raj has worked out that every pizza is worth two pounds fifty. When he delivers his Merc bill to Billy, eventually, he’ll knock off all the pizzas he’s eaten – only fair and square. Could Billy just stick to cheese and tomato?
Billy’s got other plans. What about the work he’s done on Raj? As far as he’s concerned, Raj needs a few parts mending and all.
If Falstaff, a Shakespeare bloke, boasted that he could ‘turn diseases to commodity’, Billy doesn’t see why he shouldn’t
use his special gifts to buy him a few things he needs. Pain is his triumph. He’s going to take Raj through the ethics of pain management, teach him how to tightrope-walk above the abyss. Thing is, Raj doesn’t think there
is
an abyss to tiptoe over. Okay, so Stupid Club is the peril of a small business in the English community, but it’s not like he’s raving. Why then, Billy insists, does Raj think a bloody finger, caught on a bit of metal under the Merc, is a sign of good luck? Is it pain rapture or what? Like the saints who actively seek out pain humiliations of the flesh? No, as far as Billy is concerned, Raj’s bloody finger is a dialogue with the spiritual, a damning of the material world with its vain pleasures. Isn’t that right, Raj? Eh?
Raj just says something about pasting
Baywatch
stickers onto the Merc when it’s ready.
Truth is, at the moment, Raj would rather chat to Girl. In fact, his father bursts into heaving fits of hilarity every time her name comes up. He recalls the time Girl asked him whether Mars Bars came from Mars.
‘She was just having you on, Dad,’ Raj insists.
‘No.’ His father shakes his head, spluttering into his handkerchief. ‘I’m going to give you some advice, son, lay off the pizzas, they’re giving you a paunch. Eat your mother’s food. Give the car wreck back to them. If you work in the shop every Sunday for a year, I’ll
buy
you a car
with
an engine. As for the girl, she’s stark raving bonkers.’ There’s no insanity in the family and he wants to keep it that way.
The English are famous for being mad. Even the beef is mentally unbalanced, hopping about the asylums (listed buildings) singing hey nonnie no. Less frivolously, and at this point his father takes his wife’s hand and squeezes it tight, if
he gets wind that his eldest son is getting serious with Crazy Daisy, they’ll
find
him a wife.
‘But
I’m
English, Dad, and I’m all right?’ Raj looks a bit nervous now. Worst of all, he’s getting pizza cravings. Wakes up in the middle of the night longing for a Billy Special.
When Girl comes out to ‘help’ Raj, which means lying stretched out on her back on the bonnet while he fiddles with the clutch, his heart beats a bit faster.
He’s forgiven her the chicken-tikka joke. Every Friday something of a tradition has commenced. Girl brings him out a new cocktail, the most recent, presented to him in ‘an old-fashioned glass’. She was extra proud of this one. An Apricot Lady, three parts rum, two parts apricot brandy etc., garnished with an orange slice. It sent his head spinning under the car, his fingers went feeble and he cut his thumb, didn’t he? Hence the blood that Billy found so interesting. Raj saw it as a good-luck omen regarding his future with Girl. Couldn’t say
that
to the lust object’s brother, could he? Had to listen to the ‘dialogue with the spiritual’ analysis and pretend to take notes.
Girl’s gone apricot mad. Not just Fridays, every week day there’s an apricot theme. Apricot fizz, apricot shake, apricot sour, apricot sparkler. Raj has had to familiarise himself with different kinds of cocktail glasses just to please Girl. A chilled highball glass. A chilled collins glass. A chilled fucking this, a chilled fucking that. It’s a relief to grab a Pepsi from his dad’s shop fridge and glug it extra quick to halt the cocktail thirst rasping his throat, whirling his brain, whacking his thumbs into Merc tin. Raj doesn’t dare put a price on the cocktails. They are either free or priceless. A grey area. Raj is confused. Got to get his younger brother to take a swig after a hard day of Stupid Club tolerance and get his point of view.
Mind you, Billy and Girl really appreciate his work. Billy
calls Raj the Michelangelo of Merc. It’s an art treasure, the pizza boy swoons. ‘I’ve lost my equilibrium, I’m scared of falling, it’s a sightseeing rapture, I want to write postcards to people I don’t know describing it. A beauty catastrophe, better than Venice, my Merc pain inheritance.’
Girl is much cooler. ‘Yeah, Raj, it’s getting there.’ Where is there? Raj wants to know. Girl brought another blonde to look at it. Give her opinion. Louise.
Louise is wonderful. Two blondes in a day. She wears these far-out orange ankle boots. Louise reckons the Merc is nearly there too. Gave him a blow job on the back seat. Aaaah. This is the life. Don’t ever tell Girl. It’s a secret for ever. He wasn’t asking for it. She just did it. Touching him in the dark with the smell of petrol between them. Made a feast of him. Not just peckish, Louise was starving. Aaah. Life is good. Next morning he wiped the seat with apricot creme cleaning fluid, to keep up with the apricot theme Girl had introduced into his lifestyle. It’s Girl he wants, but she’s not offering and he’s not pushing. Her lips. ‘Kiss me soon but not now’ lips. There to be kissed but she doesn’t know how to ask and he’s not agitating. Anyway he has to keep his Girl feelings secret from his family. Especially since they all seem to have become involved in the car, and make lame excuses to visit him while he’s working on it. Which is most of the time. Merc Madness.
His uncle has offered to re-upholster the seats with the purple velveteen reject sample from his factory. Not to be outdone, his auntie has given him a number of air fresheners in the shape of apples and pears and Christmas trees to hang from the mirror. What with the
Baywatch
stickers and the tastes and opinions of three owners, plus Raj’s family putting their oar in on a regular basis, it’s going to be one hell of a
crowded car. If Raj can pull it off, he’s going to build a minibar in the back for Girl.
Someone else has come to see the car and Raj doesn’t know how he feels about it. His first identifiable feeling was fear. Louise’s mother came to see the car and Raj’s voice came out a bit too high when she introduced herself. She appeared the day after Louise gave him the first blow job he’d ever had. Mrs O’Reilly. Rajindra. When he uttered his name he visibly shook. Sex repercussions about to happen. He hadn’t even asked for it, Louise had made the suggestion and he thought it was quite a good one. Perhaps he should scarper into the shop on the pretext of taking over from his little brother on the till? But Mrs O’Reilly made him stay with her gentle womanly manner. Introduced herself with a little smile and looked interested when he showed her round the Merc and all his improvements. Yes, she thought purple velveteen would ‘give a lovely feeling’ to the car, thanked him politely for taking time out to show her his craftmanship, thank you very much and she has to rush because she’s off to fetch her daughter from work. She and Louise are going to the pictures. Yes, she wouldn’t mind a couple of pies from Raj’s father’s shop because her girl might be peckish after a hard day at work. Louise has an insatiable appetite. Raj muttering something about the weather, a bit rainy if she knows what he means, ushering her into the shop, instructing her to push through Stupid Club towards the fridge, waving goodbye.
After she left, Raj felt a sudden stabbing pain in his abdomen. It just came over him from nowhere. Mrs O’Reilly saying goodbye. It was a difficult and perplexing moment, the burden of some kind of affliction weighing her down, shining through her cheerfulness, something so sad that even Stupid Club went silent for a few seconds. That was a real first. The thing Stupid Club hates most is silence. Whenever silence
seems inevitable, Stupid Club have been known to move as one unit towards a packet of Hula Hoops and read out loud all the ingredients listed on the back, provoking an intense discussion on the virtues of starch salt.
Raj suddenly wants to have access to a multiplicity of understandings. He feels that his youth has been exposed to personal anguish and transgression and that in some odd way he has grown up. He even feels sad on behalf of Stupid Club. That night he went to bed early, took a couple of aspirins and dreamt of black rain gushing from his eyes. In the morning he’d forgotten all about it, ate his cornflakes and left the house whistling.
Louise made sure she scrubbed Mr England’s address off her arm before she visited him. She copied it onto a scrap of paper which she immediately lost. Big panic. Sleepless nights. Packing the FreezerWorld fridges like a robo with fear fever programmed into its inners. What if her mother finds it? Well, so what if her mother finds it? Louise has a special understanding with her mother. Never to lie to her. Louise has broken faith and she feels bad inside. The bad feeling is like a thin silver needle in her flesh, it hurts every time she moves. Yesterday she couldn’t go into work and her mother had to phone Mr Tens.
‘Is there something worrying you, Louise?’